


Good as the Bahamas

by pdorkaa



Series: gaters gonna gate | drabbles [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Vacation, ok this got longer than i intended, we stan minnesota
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 19:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pdorkaa/pseuds/pdorkaa
Summary: Their last mission before their collective, two week long leave, well... Doesn't quite go the way they'd planned.





	Good as the Bahamas

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: vacation, offworld

"Y'know, Carter" Jack leans back on the crate he's sitting on, P-90 comfortable in his lap, "I'm gonna go up there, to Minnesota, and fish. And you all" he spares a glance for his heathen teammates, "are going to be missing out."

"I'm sure, sir" Carter answers with a tolerant smile. Jack is grateful that she at least humours him - oh, he saw Teal'c's eyebrow. Daniel seems to have lapsed into a sudden coughing fit, so Jack supposes he can spare him that last glare.

They have been on this planet for, what, three days now. Honestly, Jack is starting to get bored. It's nice, but it's also lame in the way a really comfortable armchair loses some of its shine after you spend hours and hours in it. Yeah, the planet's nice: sparkling seashores, lush vegetation, and from what they've seen, no major predators in sight. Better than the Bahamas.

It's a routine reconnaissance mission, SG-1's been sent to scout the planet as a possible location for the Beta Site, and while Jack is grateful they didn't run into any trouble, the mission's been... lame. Boring.

"You done, Carter?" He asks as he pushes himself to stand. She looks up from the last of her soil and water samples and nods.

"Yes, sir."

They trek back to the gate. It isn't far away, and it's not much of a trek, and maybe Jack's overdramatic, but hell, all he wants at this point is his cabin and a beer. He's a simple man.

He nods at Daniel briefly - they've been working on this team together for seven years now, him and Daniel technically a bit longer, and he loves how easily they communicate. Daniel begins dialling.

However, just as they finish entering the iris code, Walter Harriman's voice crackles through their radios.

"SG-1, we're expecting technical difficulties. Stand by."

"Walter" Jack bends to his radio, and perhaps his voice a little more menacing than need be, but damn it, "what kind of technical difficulties?"

The next voice to speak is Hammond's. "From what I understand, Colonel, the iris mechanism suffered a power surcharge and is rendered virtually locked."

"Sir?" Carter furrows her brows.

"Don't worry, Major, we're working on the problem. Dial in in twelve hours, we'll see what we will have come up with by then."

"General Hammond" Teal'c pitches in unexpectedly. "May we proceed to the Alpha Site?"

"I'm sorry, son, but as of 0900 this morning, the Alpha Site is under quarantine until further notice. You're on your own out there." A pause. "Hammond out."

The wormhole disengages, and SG-1 is left staring at the empty gate in silence. Jack doesn't even have a tired 'back to camp, boys and girls' in him anymore. This was supposed to be easy.

 

They spend the time, of course; you don't spend years on a gate team without getting creative about passing unexpected downtime. It's not even a matter of question; soon as Daniel turns his baby blues to Jack with a frown on his face, he automatically reaches into one of his many pockets for a deck of french playing cards.

They all know how it will go down, and alas, they're not in the least bit surprised when Teal'c wipes the floor with the rest of them in texas hold'em. After a couple other rounds of snap and speed, they get tired of it, but there's not much else to do, so they try and build a house of cards.

Those things are always best when Carter's around, because Jack is pretty sure she has a running, adaptive mathematical model of the construction, and when she's around, they always finish the deck before it crumbles. It's the trademark activity of SG-1, and it's perfectly PG-13. But only because Teal'c always objects to strip poker, Jack chuckles.

So they pass the time, they tell war stories, Carter and Daniel go to check the shoreline, Jack takes a nap, Teal'c runs through a few moves to keep his mojo up, and it's paradise, really. Of course, all of them are a little stir-crazy, and all of them would much rather be elsewhere, anywhere, but its nice.

 

Carter dials out twelve hours later as ordered, and the rest of the team doesn't see her for the rest of the day. She radioes in, sure, and they let her work. They haven't packed up anyway, for fear of what happened last time, and apparently, it had been a good call. When she does get back, her face is grim, her eyes tired, and she's maneuvering a FRED apparently laden with supplies.

"How's it going?" Daniel asks her. She just sighs, rubs the side of her face to get the blood going. 

"Well, the SGC can't take incoming wormholes anymore. The iris is still not properly functional, it shuts automatically when there's an incoming wormhole. I guess it's better than it could be, but..." She sighs again, longer this time. "It's not looking good." 

"Carter, correct me if I'm wrong, but if the gate can't take the incoming calls, shouldn't'ya have been unable to contact them?" 

"No, sir" she straightens up a bit. From what I understand, the gate cannot receive the incoming bursts of energy, and cannot discharge them in the form of the vortex and a stable wormhole behind the event horizon."

Jack blinks.

"They can dial out, sir, but no one can dial in. The wormhole doesn't connect."

"How is that possible?" Teal'c tilts his head, and Daniel makes a face behind him, possibly just about to ask the same question.

"I think it's because of our dialling computer system. Normally, the main crystal in a DHD helps conduct the energy the gate is channelling. We have no DHD on Earth, so we made up for the complex programs stored in it with our own computer programs. The gate network patch usually runs through it without a hitch, but since the iris controls are not an entirely separate system. The surcharge must have damaged a lot more than they originally thought."

Jack blinks twice. "Ah." At any rate, Carter seems a bit livelier, now that she's gotten the opportunity to prattle on about something that shouldn't make sense to normal humans. Jack would call it technobabble, but he wants no hurt feelings. "Where's Siler when you need him?"

Daniel elbows him in the kidney just as Carter says:

"Sir. Sergeant Siler got severely injured in the incident."

Jack covers his face with his palms, fingers digging into the soft tissue by the corners of his eyes, and sighs. "Siler."

"Yes, sir. And..." Carter hesitates, and Jack looks up at her again, jerks his eyebrows to prompt her to go on. "Sir, I've advised Stargate Command to redirect all returning gate teams here."

Jack doesn't even have the chance to say he agrees before a "makes sense, Jack" and a "I believe that is a wise choice, O'Neill" cut him off. He sighs, glares at Daniel, and turns back to Carter.

"How many?"

"Five, sir."

"Maybe we can throw a party" he jokes half-heartedly as he stands up to examine the supplies sent over from the SGC, just to give his hands something to do.

 

Eventually, SG-19, SG-8, SG-23, SG-21, and SG-3 join SG-1 on the planet, in that order. SG-8 looks a little singed around the edges, and one of Reynolds' people - Bosco, if Jack remembers correctly - is heavily limping, but they're whole.

They make up some sort of a slapstick guard duty, just to be on the safe side, but honestly, Jack's been on this planet for almost a week now, and he didn't so much as see a worm eat another. This is Eden, he guesses, and he isn't even surprised how much more he prefers his own corner of the world. White sand, sparkling seawater, palm trees, coconuts, fish and tiny rodents, well, the Bahamas are nothing compared to this place. And this place is nothing compared to his cabin in Minnesota.

So all of them - over twenty people, over twenty of his people - kick back and relax, and Jack understands why this might seem reckless to someone. (By 'someone', he means General Hammond.) Thing is, though, he's already marked the planet as the perfect Beta Site, and even at the offworld outposts the staff has days off. These were supposed to their weeks off, damn it - so he makes up some sort of slapstick guard duty, and lets the rest bathe in the ocean.

 

In the end, it is almost a week and a half before the SGC is able to solve the problem, and in part because they had to wait for Siler to get himself back up. Doctor Lee proved well-meaning but ultimately useless, and while Carter did all she could, she would've needed to be there. 

Jack has sand in unsavoury places. Paradise Planet was nice, sure, for a couple of days, but for two weeks it was just too hot, too sandy, the sun too bright, the sea too wet.

"Ugh" Daniel groans next to him as he's shaking out sand from his jacket. "You'd think I got used to this on Abydos, but..."

Teal'c grunts. From the other end of the locker room, they can hear Carter grumble something about never going to the Bahamas again.

Jack has a brilliant idea. "Y'know" and it starts out low, he's not even sure the others - especially Carter, so far - can hear. "Y'know, I know of a place. Nice, cool pond, no sunshine, no palm trees. No fish."

Jack knows Daniel hates fishing. He'll humour him, occasionally, but Jack knows that deep down, Daniel has his book out so he can retreat to the farthest corner of his mind from the experience. Teal'c, at least, is a stoic giant when it comes to pretending he likes it, except... Well, he's not sure which is worse. He's not even sure why he's proposing this to them.

"For the whole week?" Daniel asks, brows drawn up in an incredulous frown.

"Hell, two. We all need the" Jack draws mock quotation marks in the air "the change of scenery." He can hear Carter laughing.

"I'm up for it, sir!" She yells, still interspersed with a few giggles.

Teal'c inclines his head, and Daniel shrugs. "I would prefer a walk in the pines" Teal'c says, and yeah, it's not a yes to fishing, but it counts, and that's what counts. God, Jack confuses himself sometimes.

If an alien planet can be better than the Bahamas, Minnesota's just as good.


End file.
